From left, Lilly (Felicity Huffman), Georgia (Jane Fonda) and Rachel (Lindsay Lohan) are dysfunctional family members in Georgia Rule. (Universal Studios)
Not so long ago, Lindsay Lohan was a little giggling freckle, a naturally gifted Puckish child star. But in Georgia Rule, Lohan sheds her on-screen sweetness and struts around in her off-screen wild child skin; that sound you hear is Herbie the Love Bug weeping for his fallen master.
Lohan plays Rachel, a hellion teenager sent to Idaho from San Francisco for some old-school discipline at the hands of Grandma Georgia (Jane Fonda). Lohan’s mom (Felicity Huffman) is a boozing careerist — two traits presented as equal forms of neglect — who can’t handle her daughter’s drug-taking, car-crashing, and endless sluttitude. Of course, Lohan’s other career as a tabloid fixture is a result of just these behaviours, and as the camera salivates repeatedly over the teenager’s absurdly thin body and her heaving cleavage, the movie comes to feel like an exercise in prurience, barely different from perusing the pages of Us.
Unlike in Hollywood, Rachel’s shenanigans don’t go over so well in the heartland: She performs a sexual act on a hunky Mormon farm boy (Garrett Hedlund), possibly scarring him for life, and continually hits on the local widowed veterinarian (Dermot Mulroney, who plays grieving as boredom.)
Director Garry Marshall (Pretty Woman) is an accomplished populist, but when his aim is off, he misses by such a wide mark that it’s almost unforgivable. The borders of a film like this — supposedly comic, cute and warm-hearted — need to be filled with charming secondary characters. But the narrative landscape is empty and flat, devoid of whimsy. When Rachel claims sexual abuse in her past, this rather weighty subject seems like a cynical attempt to move things along: Did she or didn’t she? Is she a liar or a victim? The wild inappropriateness of using rape as a plot point Hoovers up every last grain of potential fun.
In another time, Georgia Rule would have been called a “women’s film” — we need more of those — and this showcase for three generations of actresses may entice three generations of filmgoers to shell out. But a good relationship film requires clearly defined relationships; the only thing that seems to link these women besides vague hostility are really slim hips that look fantastic in jeans.
Resentment floats on the Idaho wind, directionless and unexplained, riding the premise that mothers and daughters just naturally loathe each other. Fonda — taut and fierce — has a few moments with Lohan where she exudes wisdom, but mostly she’s just left to play a scold, literally stuffing soap in the mouths of blasphemers (too icky to be funny). Hoffman does tremulous well, but the one everyone will want to see — as if we don’t see her enough — is Lohan, of course; a train wreck playing a train wreck.
Guess what? She does it well. Now let’s hope she never does it again.
Georgia Rule opens May 11.
Katrina Onstad writes about the arts for CBC.ca.
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